In France it is rude to let a conversation drop; in England it is rash to keep it up. No one there will blame you for silence. Whe...n you have not opened your mouth for three years, they will think: "This Frenchman is a nice quiet fellow." Be modest. An Englishman will say, "I have a little house in the country"; when he invites you to stay with him you will discover that the little house is a place with three hundred bedrooms. If you are a world tennis-champion, say, "Yes, I don't play too badly." If you have crossed the Atlantic alone in a small boat, say, "I do a little sailing."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Three poets, in three distant ages born,Greece, Italy, and England did adorn....The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,The next in majesty, in both the last:The force of Nature could no farther go;To make a third she joined the former two.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king--and of a King of England too, and thin...k foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms--I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

It seemed a long way from 143rd Street. Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from being forced to sit in the col...ored section of the bus going into downtown Wilmington, North Carolina. Dancing with the Duke of Devonshire was a long way from not being allowed to bowl in Jefferson City, Missouri, because the white customers complained about it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Different as the two poets are in many ways, and though Frost conducted a kind of private war with Eliot, it is possible to discer...n interesting resemblances beneath the obvious contrasts. In both men the central theme is metaphysical desolation. Both poets are profoundly at odds with the current of secular optimism flowing from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century. Frost's New England landscape, spare, hard, and usually unyield ing, inhabited by its declining Yankee stock, can be taken as an extended metaphor expressive of that desolation. In Frost's poetry the central persona or dramatic voice speaking the poems finds ways to live with that desolation. In Eliot's poetry the central persona lives through and finally beyond the desolation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »